A Fine Art Nude by Pin Up Illustrator Joyce Ballantyne

This oil on canvas features a moody and refined view of a nude brunette with face turned modestly and emotionally away from the viewer. By the pin up illustrator Joyce Ballantyne, this features a signed estate stamp to verso of canvas, and is signed by the artist lower right.

A Joyce Ballantyne Biography courtesy of Askart.com

Ballantyne was born in Norfolk, Nebraska, just after World War One. She attended Nebraska University for two years, painting murals in her spare time for department stores and movie theatres before leaving to study commercial art. After studying at the Academy of Art in Chicago for two years, she joined Kling Studios, where she painted Rand McNally road maps and illustrated a dictionary for the Cameo Press.

Ballantyne then moved on to the Stevens/Gross studio, where she stayed for more than ten years. Influenced, as much of the studio was, by Haddon Sundblom, she became part of a group of artists who were extremely close, both professionally and personally, including Gil Elvgren, Earl Gross, AI Moore, Coby Whitmore, Thornton Utz, and Al Buell. She had first met Elvgren when he was teaching at the Academy of Art and she was a student. After years of working closely together they often shared assignments if one of them became ill or if a schedule was tight.

In 1945, Ballantyne began painting, pin-ups for Brown and Bigelow, having been recommended by Elvgren. The firm introduced her to their national sales and marketing staff as “the brightest young star on the horizon of illustrative art”. Ballantyne designed a “novelty-fold” direct mail pin-up brochure for the company and eventually was given the honor of creating an Artist’s Sketch Pad twelve-page calendar.

Ballantyne’s most important pin-ups were the twelve she painted in 1954 for a calendar published by Shaw-Barton. When it was released nationally in 1955, the demand from new advertisers was so great that the company reprinted it many times. Ballantyne then went on to paint one of the most famous advertising images ever. Coppertone suntan lotion asked several illustrators to submit preliminary ideas for a special twenty-four-sheet billboard for their American and international markets. Ballantyne won the commission, and her final painting (based somewhat on an ideal of Art Frahm’s) became a national icon. Its little pig-tailed girl whose playful dog pulls at her bathing suit charmed the entire nation.

Ballantyne also did much advertising work for other national clients, including Sylvania TV, Dow Chemical, Coca-Cola, and Schlitz Beer. She painted pin-ups for the calendar companies Louis P Dow and Goes and illustrations for such magazines as Esquire and Penthouse.

The strikingly attractive Ballantyne often posed as her own model, as Zoë Mozert did. Like her friend Gil Elvgren, she preferred to work in oil on canvas that measured 30 x 24 inches (76.2 x 61 cm).